In order to connect our Python GUI to a MySQL database, we first have to know how to connect to the MySQL server. This requires establishing a connection, and this connection will only be accepted by MySQL if we are able to provide the required credentials.

While it is easy to place strings into one line of Python code, when we deal with databases, we have to be really thoughtful because today's personal sandbox development environment could easily end up being accessible on the World Wide Web by tomorrow.

You do not want to compromise database security, and the first part of this recipe showed ways to be more secure by placing the connection credentials to the MySQL server into a separate file and, by placing this file into a location where it is not accessible from the outside world, our database system will become more secure.

In a real-world production environment, the MySQL server installation, connection credentials, and this dbConfig file would be handled by IT system administrators who would enable you to import the dbConfig file to connect to the MySQL server without you knowing what the actual credentials are. Unpacking dbConfig would not expose the credentials as it does in our code.

The second part created our own database in a MySQL server instance, and we will extend and use this database in the following recipes, combining it with our Python GUI.